I spent 4 B on a bulk deal and aquired 305 T3 Subsystem BPCs. It will cost 38 B to buy the components to build 46 B worth of Subsystems. After the blueprint investment cost, the production run will result in a 4.1 B profit (9.13%)

Note: this profit estimation does not take in account for POS fuel or taxes. Additionally, there is the hauling, build, and trading time factor that I have not calculated. Time is money and the minerals you mine are not free.

Before Inferno Unified Inventory

Tech 3 in General

Another complicated production chain greeted my eyes as I started to learn the depth of the production process. Sleeper drops/salvage, gas reactions, and POS limited production oh my.

I found that the general price of Tech 3 hulls and Subsystems have been declining in line with the build Materials over the past year. Melted Nanoribbons, which account for a large percentage of Tech 3 items, are on the decline.

This price decline can be attributed to the general movement into Wormhole space over the past two years and that people have learned how to efficiently farm Sleeper sites.

Build Requirements

SQL all the things!

I’ve got a bunch of Subsystem BPCs which need Hybrid Components. These Hybrid Components are made from Materials (Salvage and Polymers). My level in the production chain will be to buy the Salvage and Polymers, make Hybrid Components and put these together to make Subsystems.

I needed to work with a custom table to get a master list of Materials that will go into the production run from my list of BPCs.

Using my custom typeBuildReqs table (creation details here in section 301), the following query will take the typeID of the Subsystem blueprint and give you a quantity and price of Materials needed. I have a price table called assetValues, so take that section or modify as needed.

For me 38 B is a lot of liquid ISK to be tied up while these Subsystems are constructed. Since Melted Nanoribbons account for such a large portion of the cost, I plan on purchasing all of the materials in totality but initially only 25% or 33% of the total number of Nanoribbons needed.

Subsystems cannot be made at a NPC station and must be installed in a Subsystem Assembly Array anchored at a POS. Since I do not currently have a POS up and running, I have a few options for producing these items:

Grind standing with the appropriate Faction. I do not like mission grinding. I might revisit this option once we have the (rumored) ability to change standings by trading in tags.

Pay a highsec POS anchoring service to drop a tower for me after joining my corporation. Probably the easiest option and I would get a anchored tower out of the deal.

Setup a POS in lowsec and hope not to be discovered. Risky as some bored gang could reinforce the tower, locking your assets until the timer is up.

Contract out the Subsystem production to a corporation that can build them. Higher risk for scams, less profit due to them taking a portion of the profit, but I wouldn’t have to deal with he production line.

Conclusion

I am going to put a hold on this project as I am going to put my liquid reserve into other ventures. The return is not high enough for the time invested. I’ll keep the BPCs in my hangar and revisit in a few months.

Two years ago a corpmate responded to my boredom comments in corp chat with an offer to come join him in the new frontier known as Wormhole space. I dove in headfirst with nothing to my name but a Covetor, a Dominix, and some 50 M in ISK.

At this time there were a lot of mechanics and logistical challenges to be figured out. We started this blog to help share some of our discoveries, shenanigans, and encounters in the unknown land of Wormhole space with the Eve community. Though we are currently not active in Wormhole space, I still keep the original mission of openly sharing information and experiences with the community alive.

So cheers to you, the Eve community, for being readers of our discourse. We would like to offer up prizes to everyone that has helped us stay passionately involved over the past two years.

As in true k162space fashion, we’re not going to simply give away a prize to the best comment, worst fit, or hold a lottery (thanks to CCP_OhWell for the wonderful suggestion).

Anchored in J124654, J212203, and J235219 around a planet is a can with a Bookmark. Comment on this post with the Bookmark codename as the comment will serve as your timestamp. Prizes will be given out based on discovery time.

These ships are huge and don’t dock. How are they so self-sustaining? If you expand this idea, perhaps even require some Water and Foodstuffs for them to run.

I also think it would be neat if they needed to be stocked with crew such as Civilians, Slaves (Amarr), Janitors, and Marines.

2. Subsystem Targeting for Capitals

Creating the ability to disable a specific gun, module, or Jump Drive on capitals would change combat.

3. Supercarrier Fighter and Fighter Bomber Only Bay

4. Anti-Fighter/Bomber Capital Class Ship

Smaller than a Carrier/Dread ship that can go into Siege and get a bonus for taking out Fighter/Bombers.

5. Multistation Nullsec Outposts

We’ve been asking for this one for a while and I can’t imagine the change would be all that hard. Right now if you want to have industry in nullsec, you need to put up a few Stations across the constellation. If you could concentrate services into one system, I feel that you could really create a seance of a “home system” for industrial operations.

6. Player Destructible Outposts

Perhaps an additional timer after you have destroyed all the station services?

7. Reduce % of ABC Ores in Highsec Accessable Wormholes

Having lived in wormhole space for over 6 months I can tell you that getting items in and out is a logistical challenge. I don’t think that ABC ores should be entirely removed from lower class wormholes such as C1-C3s, but rather that their amount reduced.

8. Officer, Deadspace, and Faction Mods on the Market

I loved that Pirate and Navy ships have been added to the Market. I would like to see the other modules added.

9. Tactical Overlay for Optimal and Falloff

There should be a type of indicator added to the Tactical Overlay that shows additional information such as your optimal and falloff.

For those who clicked this link hoping for another story of failure in an april fools prank, there isn’t one. Apparently we’re part of W.I. now and something about not pissing the rest of the NC off and keeping a good name intact or something silly like that.

The fittings took longer than expected to plan, working out logistics and cyno timings were a nightmare, I couldn’t find the right static in time and warp bubbles are harder to anchor than I thought.

In addition, the covops pilot was started late, the Thanatos wasn’t in position due to early unforeseen circumstances, one of the Orcas got stuck in a c4 for a while and apparently some NC alliances get touchy about where you scan.

The Nomad pilot chickened out at the last minute, I wasn’t able to achieve the NC/drone coalition temp ceasefire needed for step seven, I forgot a skill I needed for covert cynos and PL was just plain unhelpful.

Learning passable Russian took longer than expected, the towers ran out of fuel and apparently Atlas was still a bit touchy about that whole broken renter agreement thing.

In addition, CCP Soundwave was too busy with Fanfest, The Mittani didn’t think it would be very funny and I am deeply sorry about mixing up “jump” and “hold gate”, everyone involved will be reimbursed.

I’d like to apologize to CCP Fallout, Dreddit, that one covops pilot who saw too much, most of Mostly Harmless and that one corp in the C4 we had to evict. My bad.

Thanks to everyone involved, I’m sorry about those carriers and I’ll do better next year, once my corp gives me back my diplomat and pos manager roles. Sheesh, some people can’t take a joke.

So, due to a logical proofs test on tuesday, I held off on my usual fueling of the towers on sunday and studied instead like a good little college student. That plus dinner, a movie with a friend and a variety of coincidences leaves me at 3:00 Eve time ready to refuel and restock the towers. I pull up a SC2 commentated replay, my favorite fanfictions and start leisurely warping the freighter the 12 jumps from Jita to my static of the moment, slated to close in about three hours.

Plenty of time.

Of course, come 5:00 eve time, I’m 2j away from the target system when THIS comes up:

Attention players, we’re turning off the servers in about an hour for more patching stuff. It’s gonna be off for a while, so have a long skill trained!

I know that this was featured on the logon screen for a good day before, but in my defense it’s really hard to convert eve time to my local time. I have to add numbers together and everything!

So, I now have an hour to get the PoSes refueled and restocked. And so the fun begins.

4:01
Wspace colonists:
haav:FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-

4:02
I warp to the WH BM labeled “2 am sun night” and THE WH ISN’T THERE. Fearing the worst, I stop the freighter 2j from the possibly-now-dead system and start aligning back towards jita. I drop probes, scan, find a WH
4:04
I warp to a WH, BM it as “mon night 12:07”, then, just to make sure it isn’t an old WH, i mouse over all my old BMs in turn to make sure I don’t already have this location saved. A momentary panic at an “approach location” appearing next to a BM called “mon night 12:07” is ended when I realize that it’s the BM that I just made. I find the correct BM and warp to it, jump through the WH. Horray! The route is still good. Tab back to the freighter.

Which is now 5km off gate.
4:05
Wspace colonists:
Haav: EYARGHH

I reapproach with the freighter, jump back through the WH, warp to pos, grab an itty and fill it with some of the reactants. Jump back to the WH, hit jump…
“a recent jump has made this WH unstable due to some science thing. Try again in 2 minutes and 10 seconds.”

Wspace Colonists:
Haav: GYAH

4:07
I jump through into the system, annnnddd….. No station in system.

Wspace Colonists:
Haav: Oh ffs

Warp one system over, dock, freighter docks, I split the fuel and stuff into fifths and haul in a fifth of it.

4:13
Warp to the WH and IT ISN’T THERE AND BOTH CHARS ARE OUTSIDE THE WH ARGH
Then both clients DC simultaniously. Oh, my connection crashed.

4:15
In a misguided attempt to stay efficient, I start moving the carbon polymers from tower 1 to towers 2, 4, and 14.

4:25
Screw the polymers, I’ll just divy up fuel.

4:28

I try to use the freighter alt to help haul fuel, but half of her “tower ##” bms are for the actual towers and the other half are for the silos, the crowning moment being the bookmark “tower 04 (silo)” which goes to the opposite side of the tower from the silos. Go figure.

4:30
If I have 14 towers and am spending about two minutes per to get all the little numbers up to at least two days, can I finish in half an hour?

4:58
Apparently so.

4:59
Freighter pod jumps back into normal space.
Wspace colonists:
haav wew-
annnd the downtime starts. See you all in 1-2 days!

So as you can imagine, I’ve never had to really screw with the more complicated overview settings until now.

Scanning for a WH to get PoS fuel to our…PoS, I find squat. To clarify, I’m obligated to only scan in systems my alliance has renters rights. With, on average, our “I make more WHs lulz” space upgrade giving us a 5% chance of a WH per system, this gives me a 15% chance to find a WH. So, once a week if I’m lucky.

Not being satisfied with 15% chance, I go over to our neighbors space (who are incidentally very nice and generous, forgiving people) and find a WH. Then another.

Four WHs later, I find a highsec WH. All of the WHs have been activated by me, so apparently they found a WH, and got through one, maybe two before going back to enjoying things in their nullsec.

So, I pop back out into the null system.

haav > Hey, where’s the guy that asked me to scan this WH? Oh well, who wants the BMs?

So, hand off the BMs to a few people or two and head out to get an industrial of pos fuel in. Everyone wins!

Anywho, I pop back out the highsec in my trusty itty V, when the WH flashes after I’ve gone through. dude neutral to me appears.

Let me stress that if a person you’re neutral to comes through the same WH you’ve gone through, nothing good can come of it.

So, to keep an eye on things, I get an alt on and have them watch the WH. The neut, in a caracal, sits with me. It’s like a mexican standoff, but without guns.

Watching the WH, a badger in the same corp as the neut appears off the WH. Then, a badger blue to me, in the alliance I gave the BMs to jumps through and appears next to me. THEN, the CEO of chained reactions, appears next to me.

So, we’ve got four corps staring at each other, each wondering what to do. For those unaware with how WHs work, here’s the dilemma:

The WHs are more than one WH deep. What this means is that once you warp off the initial WH, you have no idea what you’re up against and you can’t go O NOES THEY HAD MORE PEOPLE and jump back to highsec immediately. Since my corp has “industry” in its name, I don’t think I’m one of the major players, moreof a WH corp, a WH alliance and a nullsec alliance staring at eachother and wondering how many friends each person has, hidden of course by the lack of local.

So, I fill my Itty V with PoS fuel, fit it entirely for cargo with an afterburner and an improved cloaking device thrown on. Why? That’s how I fly.
By the time haav gets back to the WH, everyone else has gone. While usually this would be cause for calm, I’m worried shiteless.

Eventually, I jump my alt into the WH and run her through. Clear. I then jump the itty V through the highsec WH and into the first C3. No-one uncloaks and tries to make me into a hood ornament. I overload the AB, align to the planet closest to the next WH and engage the cloak, disengage, warp, yadda yadda look up cloak-warping.

Land on the next WH, jump through. I am now officially in the ” If someone has a warp disrupter in my general direction, I’m screwd” zone.

Warping to the next WH, I misclick and warp to the planet nearest to the WH. Whooopsie.

So, warp from a dead stop to the WH, I realize I’ve forgotten to check directional. I open it, hit scan, and realize that I’m still starting to warp. I madly hit cancel…

“Too late, already in warp”.

The directional results come in.

Onyx.

CRAP!

And, thanks to Tyrannis, I can’t wuss-disconnect. So, land on the WH. Surprise surprise, there’s a negative standing pilot in an Onyx. Or, by its full name, “shit shit crap crap bubbled cancel warp nononononono HIC interdictor flee o no I can’t!”. No bubble tho, so I jump through and madly warp to the next WH, powered by sheer panic.

Two WHs later, I recall that the dude in the Onyx is, in fact, the dude that I gave the BMs to back in null.

./facepalm

We convo, have a good laugh, and I get the PoSes refuled. His blue standing to me was apparently overruled by his wanted status which I should probably fix, considering that I actually run into people who are blue on a regular basis.

This compared to WH space, where I ran into a blue once and never even saw him.

Scanning, argued as being the only thing in Eve that takes skill, is a fairly integral part of WH life; to the point that if you can’t, and you’re alone, you’re dead. With that in mind, here is my guide to scanning. You’re
welcome.

I’m going to go ahead and assume that you, the reader, know the basic principle of how to scan, I.E. press the “launch probes button” a few times and meander around a system slowly and tediously finding and cataloging every signature. Similarly, I’m going to assume that you want more from this post than “you should press the probes button a few times and meander around a system for a few hours”.

So, here’s my guide to finding a WH route in a hurry.

The first thing to know is, by design or accident, WHs are not very hard to find, even without basic scan skills. I’ve found radars that had me punching my desk in frustration after the third time of getting stuck at 95%, but never once found myself thinking “dangit, why can’t I pin this WH”.

Assuming you have mediocre or good skills in the scanning subdivision, and a mediocre or excellent scan ship (covops or t3 w/ sister gear), a WH will generally have a scan strength of 10-27% when scanned at about 4 au. So, essentially, setup the probes at 4 au and do a sweep of the system, going from planet to planet. Ignore any effing ladars that pop up at 70% or indeed 100% (happened twice), magnetometric (not likley), or radars (less likley). If you do happen to see an unknown, pin it, warp to it, BM it, weigh your options.

From what I’ve experienced, the easier WHs go to lighter systems (in terms of C1-6), so it stands to reason that the WHs you find on the first pass will either be good WHs, or k162s, which seem to similarly have a higher initial “strength” than other WHs.

I’d say as a blanket statement that if you do run into a k162, and the route’s still new, I’d just close the WH connecting you to the system with the k162 and start over. A k162, again, means that someone else is nearby, may have already activated the static of the system you’re sitting in, giving you less time to do your operations. He may be planning an ambush, or plotting a PoS attack (both unlikely). Admitted, seeing as you found the k162, he may never notice you, but I’ve found that people tend to notice new connections. Especially CCRES, AH, two seperate groups of russians and some germans, all of whom have spilled at us from K162s that we decided to stay connected to.

Alright, for the CCRES one we were asleep, but the fact that K162s are not fun stands. Try to find a static to static to static route for maximum stability and duration of the routes.

Here’s the above paragraph, but in more detail and with pictures.

First, bookmark the damn WH you came in from so you don’t end up rescanning the damn thing. Remember, informative is key, in this case where it goes, and whether it’s incoming or outgoing.

Second, launch probes. You might think this comes naturally, but I figured it was important enough to include. Use any number greater than three. I like seven.

After launching probes, get away from the WH. It takes only one smartbombing BS to ruin a cloaky’s day. I like to stay about 30-40km away, close enough to run back in in good speed but far enough away that it is highly unlikely that you’ll be decloaked by random jerks. Try to either keep in constant motion or not be between a celestial and the WH, because a ship warping in sometimes decloaked you when he goes through your ship at several thousand kilometers/second.

So, now that you’re cloaked (double check), actually enter scan mode.

On placement: make your probes look like this.

If you’re using four probes, then just do the plus sign. If you use any more than four, leave them in the center. I like to think it helps to have two of them one size smaller than the others, but that’s just me.

Now, pick a planet. A sig will only spawn within eight AU of a planet, but for the initial sweep I like to use 4 AU as a starting point. In my experience, sigs usually hang around or beside rather than above or below planets.

I usually start with middle planets, as there’s usually more sigs where there are more planets. Makes sense, right?
For this demonstration, though, I’m using the outer planet.
So, ready to hit scan? No, you’re not. Make sure the damn scan thingy is positioned correctly vertically.

OKeyes, now hit scan.
A ladar and two other things. Now, ladars being the wormhole equivalent of sewer runoff, ignore it and look at the other four.

One of them, ALT whatever, has three signatures and is at about 3% strength. This tells us that it’s too weak to be your usual wormhole. The other sig, tho, is below 25% but fairly close, so let’s center on that.

Scan that and… little red dot. Switch to vertical view:

excellent, reposition the center of your little cross/plus/times sign and rescan, BAM:
It’s a WH, So let’s decrease the size of the probes by one, make the cross shape again, do that a few times:
Scan for the last time, bang it’s a WH. Warp to it @ 20km in case of smartbombing BS, ectera.

BM it, and ignore it. Ironically, between the previous and next screenshot, two orcas jumped through and closed the WH.

Reset the probes to 4au, check the next planet.
Looks like nothing you can pin on the first pass, so let’s try the next one.
21% strength, very nice, very pinnable.

Get it lined up on the vertical plane (this has screwed up more than once scan for me)

Scan, annnnddd….it’s a grav.

That was the only “close” sig, so let’s check the next planet.

Hmm…the dots have split. I usually go off “If you get 25% strength or more when you add the strengths of the two dots together, go for it”. So, let’s hit YDX. Adjust the probes so that you’re encompassing the two dots in the middle and hit scan.

Wewt, unknown. Pin it, warp to it using the above “make the cross smaller” methods.

Awesome, it’s outgoing. First, check and make sure it’s not about to collapse. If it says “about to collapse” in the info, look at the actual WH. The more erratic and jagged the pulsing, the more likely you are to be screwed if you go through. If the WH is indeed critical, I like to use this simple test:
Can you and your corp finish scanning a route, get everything you need out, get everything you need in and be done in less than four hours?

If no, let the WH close/force collapse. If yes, let the WH close and self collapse, because generally the thing’s only got a hour or two left. Again, if you’ve stared at WHs long enough that you can usethe subtle nuances to determine the exact time it has till collapsing, go nuts, if not, let it shut and use a new/different route.

Now, let’s check if it’s the static. Open staticmapper or your corp’s super secret static database you won’t share with anyone.
In hindsight, this should have also been step one, to check the number of jumps recently along with checking the directional for activity.Click the yellow number next to constellation.
Awesome, looks like you’ve found the static. Record the thing in the database.

P.S. For those of you who wanted a “how to scan someone out without them noticing” guide, why the heck should I tell you? Get a corpmate to float in system in a hulk and pay him 5 mil every time he spots your probes.